


Up She Rises

by spacehopper



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, post-Death of the Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 01:52:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12470844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehopper/pseuds/spacehopper
Summary: Billie goes home.





	Up She Rises

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



You can’t go home, or some such prattle, Thomas had always said. The sort of profound bullshit she’d ignored for the trite crap it was. Billie had never wanted to go home, because home’d been hunger and pain and the stink of alcohol. But as she stepped off the boat and onto the docks of the city that’d birthed her, she remembered the words again. Maybe Thomas had known something after all.

A boy who wasn’t a boy who wasn’t a man who wasn’t that either followed her off the boat. Staring up at the clouds like a thrice cursed moron, he slammed into some fancy pants noble, then ducked his head as the man cursed him. She should’ve left him in Karnaca. She’d thought it more than once. Should’ve left him to fend for himself, as best he could. It was how she’d learned. It was how _he’d_ learned. She knew that now, not just from the words but from the way he watched the crowds, and held himself at the ready, always waiting to run or fight even when the knife couldn’t be stopped, because that was all they knew.

“What am I doing,” she muttered to herself. “What are you doing, you damn fool.”

He laughed, and she turned to meet eerie yellow eyes staring at her like she was the most interesting thing in the world. Interesting. That’d always been was important to him. All that’d been important to him, for longer than Billie knew. Before he could say anything, she cut him off.

“You’re who you are, not who you were,” she said. “You learn to survive, or you die.”

“I died once, Billie Lurk,” he said. “I don’t plan to again.” He held out his hand, fine velvet purse nestled in the palm. Damn him, but he still surprised her. She heaved a sigh.

“We’ll make something of you yet,” she said. Like Daud had made something of her. Was that what she was doing? But Billie’d never been one for much introspection. “Let’s go.”

He smiled, and it was almost human.


End file.
